US judge orders hundreds of sites “de-indexed” from Google, Facebook

Luxury goods maker Chanel has convinced a judge to order the seizure of …

After a series of one-sided hearings, luxury goods maker Chanel has won recent court orders against hundreds of websites trafficking in counterfeit luxury goods. A federal judge in Nevada has agreed that Chanel can seize the domain names in question and transfer them all to US-based registrar GoDaddy. The judge also ordered "all Internet search engines" and "all social media websites"—explicitly naming Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Bing, Yahoo, and Google—to "de-index" the domain names and to remove them from any search results.

The case has been a remarkable one. Concerned about counterfeiting, Chanel has filed a joint suit in Nevada against nearly 700 domain names that appear to have nothing in common. When Chanel finds more names, it simply uses the same case and files new requests for more seizures. (A recent November 14 order went after an additional 228 sites; none had a chance to contest the request until after it was approved and the names had been seized.)

How were the sites investigated? For the most recent batch of names, Chanel hired a Nevada investigator to order from three of the 228 sites in question. When the orders arrived, they were reviewed by a Chanel official and declared counterfeit. The other 225 sites were seized based on a Chanel anti-counterfeiting specialist browsing the Web.

That was good enough for Judge Kent Dawson to order the names seized and transferred to GoDaddy, where they would all redirect to a page serving notice of the seizure. In addition, a total ban on search engine indexing was ordered, one which neither Bing nor Google appears to have complied with yet.

Missing from the ruling is any discussion of the Internet's global nature; the judge shows no awareness that the domains in question might not even be registered in this country, for instance, and his ban on search engine and social media indexing apparently extends to the entire world. (And, when applied to US-based companies like Twitter, apparently compels them to censor the links globally rather than only when accessed by people in the US.) Indeed, a cursory search through the list of offending domains turns up poshmoda.ws, a site registered in Germany. The German registrar has not yet complied with the US court order, though most other domain names on the list are .com or .net names and have been seized.

The US government has made similar domain name seizures through Operation In Our Sites, grabbing US-based domains that end in .com and .net even when the sites are located abroad. Such moves by themselves would seem to do little to stop piracy in the long-term; they simply teach would-be miscreants to register future domain names in other countries.

Why wait for SOPA?

"I'm sympathetic to the 'whack-a-mole' problem rights owners face, but this relief is just extraordinarily broad and is on shaky procedural grounds," he writes. "I'm not sure how this court can direct a registry to change a domain name's registrar of record or Google to de-list a site, but the court does so anyway. This is probably the most problematic aspect of the court's orders."

Rightsholders have asked Congress to write these provisions (and a few more) into law, and they have pushed for government seizures like those from Operation In Our Sites (which just seized another batch of new domains this last weekend). But as Balasubramani points out, cases like Chanel's show that rightsholders can already get what they want from judges, and they can go after far more sites more quickly than the government.

"The fight against SOPA [the Stop Online Piracy Act] may be a red herring in some ways," he notes, "since IP plaintiffs are fashioning very similar remedies in court irrespective of the legislation. Thus, even if SOPA is defeated, it may turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory—opponents may win the battle but may not have gained much as a result."

Wow If this sort of thing gains real ground (like Google and Bing actually comply and globally de-list these sites according to US court orders) the rest of the world is going to have to abandon the US Search corporations and 'innovent' some of our own.

Your 1950s style/attitude content industry is destroying your position as world tech leaders...

Wow If this sort of thing gains real ground (like Google and Bing actually comply and globally de-list these sites according to US court orders) the rest of the world is going to have to abandon the US Search corporations and 'innovent' some of our own.

Your 1950s style/attitude content industry is destroying your position as world tech leaders...

The internet is supposed to be an international entity. What gives the US the right to seize sites that are offshore. These cases should be adjudicated by an international body, not some court in Nevada. It could very well happen that the US could find itself internetically isolated from the remainder of the world. On the other hand, the US doesn't appear to want to acknowledge the remainder of the world. This country will be the author of its own demise.

Doubtlessly, this judge has no idea of what's he's actually done, and no idea that he might not have had the authority to do it. It reminds me of How To Fly, in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Obviously flying is impossible, due to gravity. But if you can learn to ignore gravity, you can fly!

I believe it's frighteningly easy to get away with many things in our society by simply blundering ahead, either ignoring the rules or not knowing them. If you seem confident, most people won't question you. Don't see why it would be any different for judicial rulings.

I agree with all the WTF comments, but I also can't help not caring what happens to "fakechanel.com" or whatever. (I also don't buy slippery slope arguments BTW.)But again, this is way overreaching what a US judge can really do.

What is wrong with these judges???? Can't they see that this is unconstitutional? Innocent until proven guilty?? Where did that go? These sites may be guilty as hell but they deserve notice and a chance to appear in court.

Also, why does the government feel it can tell Google what to do?

I think there needs to be some recourse that we as the public can take against judges that disregard the constitution in their decision.

Wow If this sort of thing gains real ground (like Google and Bing actually comply and globally de-list these sites according to US court orders) the rest of the world is going to have to abandon the US Search corporations and 'innovent' some of our own.

Your 1950s style/attitude content industry is destroying your position as world tech leaders...

The US hasn't been the world tech leader for some time. Between software patents and inane web legislation, we're soon to be behind most nations outside of France and the UK. Even better is the joke we call our infrastructure for cellular and internet access. For goodness sake, Romania (which is only behind South Korea) has better average speeds (and overall connectivity) for internet access than the US! The US seems all too eager to legislate away our technical superiority in favor of an industry that is in no way shape or form in financial crisis (every time they release fiscal data they do better than the previous year).

I think it is pretty clear that many areas of this ruling are beyond the jurisdiction of the court and are questionable at best. I also find it particularly troublesome that they feel they can order a third party to "de-index" some sites. As if removing something from google is synonymous with removing it from the internet. While it is arguable that google and other search engines are an important factor in finding things on the internet, I do not see it being right by any degree of common sense. I mean the only reason I see them ordering Google to do anything is simply because they are popular. Since when does being popular make you responsible for punishing and being punished for copyright infringement? I don't know, but this just doesn't make sense to me is all.

How on earth did the judge allow for joinder of all these defendants in one single case, when they clearly have no relation to each other, and many are clearly in disparate jurisdictions? This is some astonishingly poor jurisprudence.

This is insane. Google and the other search engines aren't a party in this case -- how can the judge command them to do anything if they haven't broken the law or violated a regulation? This should only be allowable if Chanel went ahead and sued the search engines to force them to de-index (which isn't going to work, as has already been pointed out).

As retarded as this is, I bet Google, Bing and the other major search engines (?) will not comply. Why should they?

Stupid Americans. So you'll allow your businesses to drive you into the ground, meanwhile, the rest of the world takes over leadership in the Internet. You control ICANN, well I am sure we'll just ignore it, same with DNS. If America wants to control the Internet, that's fine but it will be like China. You'll control your own little corner of it and the rest of the world will continue to enjoy internet freedoms.

The internet is supposed to be an international entity. What gives the US the right to seize sites that are offshore. These cases should be adjudicated by an international body, not some court in Nevada. It could very well happen that the US could find itself internetically isolated from the remainder of the world. On the other hand, the US doesn't appear to want to acknowledge the remainder of the world. This country will be the author of its own demise.

How on earth did the judge allow for joinder of all these defendants in one single case, when they clearly have no relation to each other, and many are clearly in disparate jurisdictions? This is some astonishingly poor jurisprudence.

technically the relation is they are all selling fake chanel.

and i can see them ordering from .com sites declaring them counterfeit(shouldnt this have been done by an outside party?), and getting the orders to sieze them make some sense. Outside of the US based websites, i dont understand how they can do so.

I was under the impression this kind of seizure and de-listing occurred on a fairly regular basis for things like bank phishing sites, this doesn't strike me as a terrible stretch from that. At least they still need to get a court order for it.

Wow. While I have no sympathy for those who market goods under someone else's trademark, the precedent here is alarming.

The level of due process seems to be suspiciously low. "We ordered something from here that had our name on it, it doesn't look like ours, so the domain gets whacked". What happens when it's ebay or a similar online auction site that only provides middle-man services? What about retailers that themselves are victims of suppliers passing off faked goods?

What happens when a manufacturer wants to stop sale of second hand goods? Right... without proper due process, we can just go whack the sites selling them.

I agree with all the WTF comments, but I also can't help not caring what happens to "fakechanel.com" or whatever. (I also don't buy slippery slope arguments BTW.)But again, this is way overreaching what a US judge can really do.

Slippery slope is only a fallacy when you can't show the mechanism by which this effect leads to a greater effect down the road. In this case the mechanism should be obvious: legal precedent.

I agree with all the WTF comments, but I also can't help not caring what happens to "fakechanel.com" or whatever. (I also don't buy slippery slope arguments BTW.)But again, this is way overreaching what a US judge can really do.

Slippery slope is only a fallacy when you can't show the mechanism by which this effect leads to a greater effect down the road. In this case the mechanism should be obvious: legal precedent.

If the seized domains were, in fact, selling counterfeit items, then I have no sympathy. But I do have a problem with this case. And it lies in the fact that there was no due process involved. The judge seems to have a blank sheet signature on anything Chanel submits. The defendants in the case never had a chance to be a defendant.

Wow If this sort of thing gains real ground (like Google and Bing actually comply and globally de-list these sites according to US court orders) the rest of the world is going to have to abandon the US Search corporations and 'innovent' some of our own.

Your 1950s style/attitude content industry is destroying your position as world tech leaders...

This...

Yep, agreed. We USians are getting so backwards and fascistic in our approach to the 'nets, privacy, civil rights, etc, that we deserved to get our asses kicked by other countries, in the form of innovation happening outside the US and the US being technologically sidelined. Maybe when the corporate giants see that their bottom lines are being hurt by our attempts to turn the Internet into a backwater, they'll push for reform.

How on earth did the judge allow for joinder of all these defendants in one single case, when they clearly have no relation to each other, and many are clearly in disparate jurisdictions? This is some astonishingly poor jurisprudence.

technically the relation is they are all selling fake chanel.

and i can see them ordering from .com sites declaring them counterfeit(shouldnt this have been done by an outside party?), and getting the orders to sieze them make some sense. Outside of the US based websites, i dont understand how they can do so.

mind you i dont fully agree with this

No, they're all accused of selling fake Chanel. Nobody has been found guilty of anything. Secondly, these sites are unrelated and deserving of individual trials. We don't suddenly lump everyone accused of robbing different convenience stores together in one trial, because their defenses are likely to be different as each party is an individual actor. This judgment is asinine in the utmost.

Is the consensus among commenters on Ars that it should be legal to sell counterfeit goods online? If not, whose job IS it to police these sites?

There was no trial, man. The accused were denied the opportunity to face their accusers in court.

Sixth Amendment:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

This is exactly how things are gonna be from now on. The politicians like to say that there will be due process and that this is not censorship but they're wrong. From now on, the citizens of the US will only be allowed to see the US government approved version of the internet.

Don't worry though, the government is taking away your freedoms to protect you.

Is the consensus among commenters on Ars that it should be legal to sell counterfeit goods online? If not, whose job IS it to police these sites?

If they're presenting their goods as genuine, customers should be laying (fraud) charges against them.

If they're using/abusing Chanel trademarks, Chanel should be laying charges against them.

This nonsense, on the other hand, is like getting a court order to have an infringing company's name removed from the phonebook, and telling the phone company to make sure it doesn't happen again. Which is obviously perfectly reasonable.